Miss Julia Johnston, 1824, Richard Read watercolour on paper. Photo: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.
The woman – Julia Johnston – seen in the portrait above was born in NSW in 1796.
She was the eldest daughter of Major George Johnston who, in a plot engineered by the execrable John Macarthur (known as “the great perturbator”), overthrew the NSW Governor William Bligh on 26 January 1808.
Not only can’t we be sure that the woman seen in the painting actually is Julia Johnston but the portrait may have been painted by either Richard Read senior (c.1765–1829) or his son Richard Read junior (1796–1862).
And, regrettably, even many of the details about the descendants of the famous Australian Rum Rebel and their connections with Illawarra’s early history are also mostly based on admittedly less than certain evidence.
For, indeed, what is thought to be known about the Johnston family’s early connections with Illawarra are, regrettably, mostly derived from sources recorded long after the events they claim to document.
And one of these relates to a rare vintage cotton dress thought to have been worn by Julia Johnston and originally donated to the Illawarra Historical Society.
Today that dress is held by the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and can be very clearly viewed here.
One of the enduring puzzles about Illawarra history that keeps me guessing is who actually first donated the dress to the Illawarra Historical Society (IHS).
Resorting to an AI search I was unhelpfully informed: “The dress was donated to the Society in the 1970s by a descendant of the Johnston family.”
But the question, of course, is which one.
Colonel George Johnston and convict Esther Abrahams arrived together with the First Fleet aboard the Lady Penrhyn, cohabitating all the way and continuing to do so for the rest of their lives.
One of their subsequent children was Julia Johnston born in NSW in 1796 who, unsurprisingly, I never met.
However, in the 1990s I did get to meet one descendant of George and Esther and that was Bert Ernest Weston who was born at Albion Park in 1903 and who regularly told me heaps about the early Illawarra right up to his death in 1996.
And, even though Bert never told me he did, my guess is that it was Bert who donated the dress to the IHS – but it’s only a guess.
One thing we don’t have to guess about, however, is that Colonel George Johnston got one of Illawarra’s first land grants, a generous 1500 acres (607 ha) with Macquarie Rivulet running through it.
This map shows Colonel George Johnston’s large Albion Park land grant. Image: Supplied.
Johnston originally called the land grant “Macquarie’s Gift” because he and Governor Macquarie (who replaced the deposed the Governor Bligh deposed by George himself) had been fellow officers and friends since the American War.
So instead of Macquarie arresting his old Rum Rebel mate, he gave Johnston a huge chunk of land for free – plus convicts to work it.
But, sadly, when it comes to the history of European Illawarra in the first decade of the 19 century we often only have the hearsay of my favourite early Illawarra historian – Frank McAffrey – to rely on and so can’t know for sure.
But this is what McAffrey reckons he was told: “I remember being at the late E H Weston’s home at Albion Park Illawarra in November 1878, when he showed me the oil painting of a roan Shorthorn bull, Melmoth, that was imported to NSW by his uncle and father in-law, David Johnston. I asked him if that was the first imported bull that reached Illawarra? His reply was, No, not by a long way. He went on to say that ‘my grandfather, Major George Johnston, was one of the first to send cattle to Illawarra. During a drought all the country around Liverpool was burnt up, consequently, my grandfather and a few others who had good cattle asked Governor Kings’ leave to send cattle to Illawarra. Captain Nicholls, a relation of the old Major, brought them down in a boat and put them ashore at Five Islands. Two ex-convicts were placed in charge. They were only yearlings at the time, and they remained in Illawarra long enough to survive the Bligh Rebellion.”
If true this would mean that some of the Johnston family’s cattle were grazing in Illawarra at some time before 1808, long before Dr Charles Throsby did so in 1815.
A young Bert Weston while moving the tetrahedra from the WWII Tank Trap at Kemblawarra to Berkeley Harbour. Bert converted his house boat by chopping the top off and adding a winch. Photo: Supplied.
I never met the historian Frank McAffrey but I did meet Bert Weston.
Bert Weston’s father was Alick Horsley Weston (1863-1941) and his grandfather was Edward Henry Weston (1833-1913), both of Albion Park. But it was Bert’s great grandfather, George Ernest Weston (1786-1856) who married Blanche, the younger sister of Miss Julia Johnston.
And so my guess is that it was Bert Weston who first donated the rare colonial dress presumed to have been owned by Julia (the eldest daughter of the famous Rum Rebel) and now housed in the Powerhouse Collection.
Bert, however, always liked to remind me when I spoke disparagingly of his Rum Rebel ancestor who deposed Governor Bligh that the Johnston family did eventually ascend to the top when another descendant of Colonel George Johnston, Rear Admiral Sir David James Martin, became the legally appointed Governor of NSW in 1989.
And that’s almost as remarkable as the dress thought to belong to Julia Johnson managing to survive all these years.
